CfA: Who knows what in mental health care? Philosophical perspectives on lived experience, experiential knowledge and epistemic injustice
In many Western countries, mental health care practice and research is increasingly valuing the participation and contributions of (former) service users. A variety of motivations (ethical, epistemological, socio-political, …) is driving the trend of including (the views of) people with lived experience into various forms of care, research and policy-making. Philosophers are picking up on this trend, and are addressing various elements of this complex phenomenon by drawing on a range of theoretical fields and empirical frameworks. The goal of this conference is to bring together researchers who work on similar, adjacent fields, such as lived experience research, experiential knowledge and expertise, and epistemic injustice.
We invite contributions (for oral, in-person presentations) that address the following, or related, questions:
- How may we further substantiate the various motivations (e.g. socio-political, ethical, epistemological, …) to include people with lived experience into mental health care? Are there tensions between these motivations?
- With respect to the epistemological motivation, how does directly including people with lived experience into mental health care differ from the a more indirect situation where people with lived experience are ‘studied’ by researchers, who then report on ‘the perspective of service users’? In other words, is there anything missing in qualitative research (including phenomenological research) that is complemented by including people with lived experience directly? And if so, what exactly?
- Does everyone with lived experience also have experiential knowledge? Or does ‘something have to be done with’ lived experience in order for it to count as knowledge (or even expertise)? What kind of knowledge may be derived from lived experience, precisely? What kind of expertise?
- Epistemic injustice (in mental health care) concerns cases where a person is not taken seriously ‘as a knower’, or as someone who possesses knowledge. However, what (kind of) knowledge is this? What ethical implications might the answer to this question have?
- We also welcome contributions that target related issues (i.e. which are not about lived experience, experiential knowledge or epistemic injustice directly), such as:
- How may research on transformative experience be helpful in the aforementioned discussions, given that transformative experiences supposedly alter one’s epistemic positions and values?
- How may research on imagination be helpful? For instance, Kind (2021) discusses whether and to what extent it is possible to imagine experiences that are radically different from your own. Might that provide insight into lived experience, or even generate specific knowledge?
- How may research on social cognition be helpful? For instance, Ratcliffe (2012) has argued that so-called ‘radical empathy’ may enable us to understand people who have radically different experiences. Yet some have expressed concerns about such views from the angle of epistemic injustice (Spencer & Broome 2023).
- How may research on subjectivity and objectivity in the philosophy of science be helpful? For instance, Tekin (2022) has proposed an alternative view in terms of Interactive Participatory Objectivity.
In preparing a submission, please note the following:
- To increase focus, the conference is aimed at philosophy (e.g. epistemology, ethics, phenomenology, etc.), although empirical work is welcome insofar as it is connected to or embedded in philosophical thought. Our project will organize an interdisciplinary conference on the same topics (lived experience, experiential knowledge and epistemic injustice) in 2026.
Abstracts should be between 400 and 600 words. Please send them to Roy Dings. Deadline for submitting abstracts is March 1st 2025.
Invited/confirmed speakers
· Lisa Bortolotti (University of Birmingham)
· Roy Dings & Derek Strijbos (Radboud University)
· Ian James Kidd (University of Nottingham)
· Julian Kiverstein (Amsterdam University Medical Center)
· Şerife Tekin (SUNY Upstate Medical University)
Date and location
Wednesday June 11th and Thursday June 12th 2025
Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Organizers
· Roy Dings
· Linde van Schuppen
· Derek Strijbos
Acknowledgement of funding
This event is part of the interdisciplinary research project “Who knows what? Experiential knowledge in mental health care”, which is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO, grant number 406.23.FHR.006).